An incoming message trilled inside Lucien’s head, conveyed directly to his brain by his augmented reality implant. A priority comms icon flashed on his ARCs. He mentally answered it.
Deputy Laos’s gaunt face appeared in the top right of his field of view. He looked stricken. “Chief! We need you back at the station. It’s chaos out there. We have looters all across the ship, and reports of shots being fired in four different hangar bays.”
“What?” Lucien shook his head. “Why the hangar bays?”
“People are trying to steal ships and escape. Last one who tried that was a councilor, if you can believe that. We’re taking him into custody as we speak.”
Lucien blinked in shock. “No, I can’t believe that. He should be setting an example for everyone else right now, not abandoning ship.”
“Yeah, well...” Laos trailed off. “Just get back here, Chief. We need you. People are scared.”
Lucien nodded. If people were trying to flee the ship, and a councilor was leading the charge with a gun, things had to be really bad out there. What weren’t Astralis’s leaders telling them? “I’ll be there as soon as I can get my kids to the nearest shelter.”
“The nearest shelter to your location is in Hubble Mountain, Chief—number twelve.”
Lucien nodded. “Thanks, Laos. See you soon.” He ended the transmission and turned to Atara. “Let’s go, sweetheart.”
“Where?”
Lucien lifted Theola out of her chair. She gave him an oblivious smile, and he smiled tightly back.
“We’re going to the shelter. You’ll be safe there.”
“Is mommy going to be there?” Atara asked.
“No.”
She grabbed his hand and squeezed. “But you will be, right?”
Lucien grimaced and went down on his haunches beside Theola. “I will be there, but first I have to take care of a few things.”
“What things?”
“I have to make sure nobody gets hurt right now. They’re scared and they’re doing stupid things. Daddy’s job is to keep them safe.”
“But I’m scared, too!” Atara said, with tears springing to her eyes.
Theola picked up on the mood of their discussion, and she made a frowny face, just about to burst into tears herself.
Lucien flashed a silly grin at his one-year-old and began bouncing her on his hip. Theola’s frowny face vanished and she was smiling again. Turning back to Atara, Lucien adopted a more serious look and reached out with his free hand to wipe the tears from Atara’s cheeks with his thumb. Her long black hair, bright red lips, and delicate, feminine features were all the spitting image of her mother. “I need you to be a big girl now, Atara. Can you do that for Daddy?”
Atara gave no reply; her lips quivered like rose petals in the wind. “You’re strong, Atara. Just like your mother.”
She shook her head. “I’m not like her. I’m like you.”
Lucien frowned. He didn’t have time to address that. “Like me, then. Daddy’s job is to protect the people in Fallside. Your job is to protect your sister. Do you think you can do that?”
Atara nodded, and wiped away the rest of her tears with the back of her hand.
Lucien flashed her a grim smile and kissed her on the cheek. “I knew I could count on you.” He got up from his haunches and pulled Atara along to the garage. He was halfway there before Atara suddenly stopped walking, and their arms pulled taut like a tow-rope.
“What about Theola’s things?” Atara asked.
Lucien blinked. He’d completely forgotten about the diaper bag. “Can you go get that for me, honey? I need to get her bottles ready.”
Atara nodded and took off at a run. Ten minutes later they were all seated in the back of the family’s hover car. “Take us to us to Emergency Shelter Twelve as fast as possible.” Lucien said, speaking to the car’s driver program.
“Right away, Mr. Ortane. Please buckle up to avoid any accidental injuries,” the car replied.
Lucien hurried to buckle his seat’s four-point harness. Atara did likewise, while the garage door finished opening. Theola was already buckled in her car seat and sucking away on her thumb.
Before the garage door had even finished sliding up, the car raced out of the garage and up into a sunny blue sky. It was a deceptively beautiful day, not a cloud in sight—except for the alien invasion bearing down on us, Lucien thought, as he gazed worriedly up at the faint glinting lights from the viewports in the floor of Level One. He half expected to see that sky shatter and cave in on them, only to get sucked back out in a gust of depressurizing atmosphere. He winced at the thought. If that actually happened, millions of people were going to die.
The car tilted suddenly to one side, banking sharply on its way back around to Hubble Mountain. Blue sky slid up and the rippled blue surface of Planck Lake took its place as the car went side-on with the ground. Lucien instinctively reached for the nearest safety rail, but when he didn’t feel the anticipated tug of gravity, he let go and reached for Atara’s hand instead. The G-forces from that turn had been all but eliminated by the car’s inertial management system.
“Are we going to die?” Atara asked, while gazing out the window at the water and trees sweeping by below.
Lucien could still hear the muted howling of civil defense sirens. “No, honey, we’re going to be just fine. This will all be over soon.” He gave Atara’s hand a reassuring squeeze.
“You promise?” Atara asked, her eyes wide and fraught with terror.
Lucien would have said or done anything to make her feel safe again, but a little voice whispered, warning him not to make promises he couldn’t keep. He pushed those doubts down and nodded convincingly. “I promise, Atara.”
She nodded back, having bought the lie.
Chapter 7
Astralis
“Let’s go, let’s go! Double time!” Footsteps ricocheted down the corridor like bullets, Marine bots mostly, with their immobile expressions and glowing holoreceptor eyes.
The enemy was landing troop ships on Astralis’s relatively defenseless upper hull. It wouldn’t be long before they cut a way in. The battle was not going well.
Garek grimaced between gasps for air. He’d gone soft. Then again, it had never been easy keeping up with machines.
His squad arrived at the end of their assigned corridor and the bots found cover positions behind bulkheads, crouching and leaning out to aim their weapons at the doors where the enemy was expected to come through.
Garek was a sergeant, which supposedly meant this particular horde of metal was his to command, but they didn’t seem to need commanding. Each of them was faster, stronger, and tougher than him. They weren’t made of hollow exosuit shells with soft, meaty centers. Bots were all shell, no meat.
The circular sensor display in the top left of Garek’s HUD flashed in warning as red dots began pouring in just ahead of their position, on the other side of the bulkhead doors. “Get ready!” he snapped over the comms.
His squad replied with a flurry of acknowledging comm clicks. Their aim never wavered. Their guns never trembled. Not like his arms, which were already growing tired from aiming the cannons in his suit gauntlets.
We’re not ready for this, Garek thought. He wasn’t the only one who’d gotten soft during the past eight years of insular bliss. It wasn’t unusual to see navy officers warming stools in Astralis’s bars at four o’clock in the afternoon—or even three.
For the first time, Garek understood the wisdom of automating all the lower echelons in the military. Bots weren’t prone to the attrition of easy living.
A molten orange circle appeared near the base of the doors; the sharp, shimmering tip of some kind of blade protruded from that spot. A molten line raced across the doors until it drew a full circle. Then came a bang as something hit the doors from the other side. The doors bulged inward, moving on hinges of liquid metal. A crack appeared, and Garek saw movement on the other side. Bang!
The doors fell,
revealing a smoke-filled corridor beyond. “Open fire!” Garek yelled, even as his arms jackhammered with golden streams of thudding cannon fire. Red HUD shading marked enemy targets through the smoke. His squad fired with ruthless precision, their bullets splashing against red-shaded targets.
The enemy came walking through amidst a noisy hail of shrapnel. Garek kept expecting to see one of them fall, muscles spasming in agony, but as the smoke cleared, Garek saw no bodies—only erect, bipedal aliens, and they wore no armor. Instead, each of them wore antiquated black robes, and pristine blue skin showed where sleeves, lapels, and hems ended. Glowing eyes pricked through the smoke, casting about curiously, as if bored with the noisy tirade of cannons.
“AP cannons having no effect,” one of the bots reported on the command channel. “Switching to explosive rounds.”
Garek’s squad stopped firing, a momentary pause while they switched out regular magazines for explosive ones. Garek’s ears rang with the echoes of gunfire as he hurried to do the same, all the while wondering: why are they just standing there? And why don’t they have any weapons?
As one, the aliens raised their hands, palms out, as if to say: stop, don’t shoot!
Garek blinked in shock. Maybe they’d got it all wrong. Maybe these aliens weren’t hostile. Maybe they came in peace. Maybe we were the ones who fired the first shots eight years ago.
“Weapons hold!” Garek ordered, a split second before his squad would have opened fire. Garek stood up and stepped out of cover. He held his hands up, palms out, like he saw the aliens doing, and switched his comms to external speaker mode. “We don’t want to fight you,” he said. “This is a peaceful vessel on a peaceful mission of exploration.” He didn’t expect the aliens to understand him, but he hoped they’d be able to infer something from his tone of voice.
One of the blue-skinned aliens turned to him. This one wore gray robes rather than black. It had glowing, ice-blue eyes, and wore some kind of luminous gold crown on its head, while the others flaunted hairless blue scalps. The one with the crown made a gesture to his fellows, and they lowered their palms. Then it stepped to the fore.
“Hello, Garek,” it said.
Garek flinched. “You know my name?” And on the heels of that: “You’re speaking Versal! How...” He shook his head, uncomprehending. “Who are you?”
“My name is Lucien,” the alien said.
Garek’s eyebrows shot up as that name clicked into place. Lucien Ortane was the chief of security in Fallside. What was an alien doing with his name? In his experience most alien names were an un-pronounceable series of clicks, chirps, and growls.
“As for who I am, I am the God and ruler of this universe,” the alien went on. “And we are Faros. We met once before, but you don’t remember that meeting.”
The Inquisitor. That explained how this being knew him. Garek worked some moisture into his suddenly dry mouth and shook his head. “You should be speaking to our leaders. I can escort you to an audience with them if you like,” Garek suggested.
“I am already speaking with them.”
Garek blinked. Confusion swirled. “I’m not a lead—”
“Not you. Not here. I am in many places. Your leaders have agreed to a surrender.” The Faro’s blue eyes brightened, and a smile curved his lips. “Your people are now slaves of the Farosien Empire.”
Garek’s blood turned to ice. “What do you mean slaves?”
The alien didn’t have a chance to reply. There came a tell-tale flash of dazzling white light that left them both momentarily blind and groping in a sea of white cotton. Astralis had just jumped away. The surrender must have been a ploy to escape.
When Garek finished blinking the spots from his eyes, he saw that the alien’s smile was broader than ever. He looked delighted. “So you have some fight in you after all. Good!”
“Weapons free!” Garek yelled.
His squad opened fire with a roar of explosive rounds. The corridor turned white again, but this time from the constant flurry of explosions. Amidst the bursts of light and glowing shrapnel, the blue aliens stood their ground, shielded from the onslaught by unseen means. Slowly, they drew shimmering swords from scabbards on their backs, and they started toward Garek’s squad. The crown-wearing alien reached the first bot and casually sliced it in half with his sword. The pieces clattered as they fell. Those swords were shimmering for a reason. The blades had to be razor-shielded—sheathed in microscopically-sharp energy shields.
Garek’s guts twisted into a knot as he imagined being sliced in half just like that bot. “Fall back!” he yelled over the squad’s comm channel. He turned and ran as fast as he dared in the confines of the ship’s corridors. His feet slammed the deck like thunder. With his suit’s augmented strength, Garek was able to put a lot of distance between him and the invading aliens in just a few seconds. He breathed out a shaky sigh as he neared the end of the corridor.
They wouldn’t be able to touch him with their swords now, and it didn’t look like the aliens had any ranged weapons. No sooner had he finished that thought than a flash of movement raced into and out of Garek’s peripheral vision with an accompanying thup-thup-thup of robes slapping bare skin, like a flag flying high in a stiff wind.
The crown-wearing alien now stood blocking the way at the end of the corridor. Garek stumbled as he tried to slow down, but he was moving too fast. With his exosuit’s augmented strength he’d already hit 45 kph.
The Faro gave a gaping grin, and a black tongue flicked over black lips. He thrust out his shimmering sword a split second before Garek collided with him. The sword went through him, armor and all, with a searing heat. The alien stumbled back a few steps with his momentum, but he pushed back with impossible strength, and managed to remain standing. The Faro’s blazing blue eyes were wide and gleeful.
Garek coughed, splattering the inside of his helmet with a crimson ink-blot. He could feel his blood boiling where it touched the alien sword; he heard it sizzling as smoke rose from his belly. Garek gaped, breathless, at the blue-skinned monster before him, the one who called himself by a human name and spoke their language as if it were his own.
Darkness swelled, and Garek’s head swam. The Faro pulled him close, until those glowing blue eyes were all he could see, and then the alien whispered into the audio-pickup in the chin of Garek’s helmet.
“Don’t worry, I’ll take good care of your daughter.”
Garek’s eyes flew wide, and he raged against the encroaching darkness. He grabbed the Faro’s neck in both of his hands and squeezed with all of the strength he had left. The alien sneered and flexed his neck against the assault, battling with Garek’s hands, trying to break his grip. Then something popped and snapped. Garek felt bones grind together beneath his fingers, and the alien’s head sagged at an odd angle, blue eyes suddenly dim and fading. Garek let go and stumbled away, taking the alien’s shimmering, sizzling sword with him in his belly. He coughed up another crimson ink-blot. Unable to see, he reached for his helmet with numb hands and twisted it off. Stumbling in a dizzy circle and fighting to remain standing, Garek batted clumsily at the hilt of the sword protruding from his torso. After several tries, he managed to grab the sword and pull it free. Blood bubbled lazily from a broad slit in his suit, and Garek collapsed to his knees, eyes wide and blinking. His mind raged against his body, urging it to stand and fight, but his muscles didn’t so much as twitch.
Garek blinked, watching the last bot in his squad fall in half a dozen pieces as three swords flashed through it at the same time. Then the blue-skinned aliens stalked toward him. It was all he could do to remain conscious and watch as they came for him. Those aliens hoisted him to his feet, pulling him up as if he weighed nothing at all, then they turned and held him facing their fallen leader, the one whose neck Garek had snapped. The alien lay on the deck with that haughty grin frozen on its lips, blue eyes bright and staring at the ceiling.
Garek blinked and heaved a shuddering gasp. Those eyes had been dim a mom
ent ago. As he watched, the impossible happened. The dead rose to life. The alien’s broken neck once again held its grinning head high, and those glowing blue eyes swept to Garek.
The dead alien spoke: “You cannot kill me.” It held out a strangely glowing hand to its fallen sword, and the blade snapped into its palm. The dormant weapon shimmered to life with a barely audible hum of energy.
Garek blinked, wondering what he’d just seen. Some kind of grav gun? But there was no device in the alien’s hand—just as he hadn’t seen any kind of shield emitter lurking beneath the alien’s robes. It was as if they weren’t really flesh and blood, but some kind of living technology.
The alien leader stalked toward him. With a derisive twist of its lips, the one who called himself Lucien—light-bringer—ran him through, over and over again. The shimmering blade flashed in and out of Garek’s torso with a searing heat, and his mouth opened in a soundless scream.
Just as he felt his life slipping away, the alien held up a glowing palm to his face and blinded him with pure, radiant light. Light-bringer, he thought, as the light swept him into a blinding sea. For a frozen heartbeat, Garek saw the mind of his enemy laid bare; it unfolded before him in a landscape of thoughts, memories, and plans as old as time. He wanted to scream out a warning to any who would listen, but it was over before he could: the light faded, taking this strange new world with it, and he was left to flail in the dark.
Alien whispers skittered around him, followed by hissing laughter. Somehow Garek knew that alien had seen into him, just as he had seen into it. It had been to the landscape of his mind and found something there, some vital weakness in Astralis that would be their undoing.
Garek battled the darkness, every ounce of his being clawing for purchase, fingernails cracking as they held to a shadowy cliff over a gaping abyss. He tried thinking the thoughts that would activate his comms and allow him to send the others a warning, but he couldn’t tell if it worked, and he no longer had the strength to hold on. He lost his grip and fell into the abyss. The darkness was so absolute that not even time could escape. This was death: falling forever in a frozen instant between all that was, and all that wasn’t, into a place so empty that not even energy could exist.
Dark Space Universe (Books 1-3): The Third Dark Space Trilogy (Dark Space Trilogies) Page 29